April 4, 2013
An apology to any-and-all readers of “Water for Elephants”: I’m not sure why so many typos got through my proofreading, and, why I had such a schizophrenic tone and style…unless, unless…unless The Cold from Hell had already taken me…
…On Day 6 – I not only had to teach my 4-7pm class – but I had to get on a Red Eye to New York to hook-up with Giti and her New York family. As I woke up with coughing and congestion and a headache, I wondered if I would make it through the day to even get to the airport…but worst of all, my class required speaking on my part; and my speech was very weak, strangled almost. Not my normal teacher voice at all! And speaking could engender a coughing or gagging fit. I tried some solar therapy and a steam shower with Tiger Balm mixed into my moustache AND some homemade tomato soup. The solar therapy made my nose run – but the tomato soup and steam shower cleared me up…for a mere 30 minutes. Should I go to La Fuentes for more chicken soup? No – because my nose would be a running faucet during class! I pounded down Day QuiI and toughed out class hoping that I hadn’t babbled in the same manner as I had the day before – and then hoped that another steam shower might clear me to fly. No such luck. In fact, I could barely speak to friend Sue before getting on the plane. Thank god they didn’t take my NyQuil from my medicine bag, and, thankfully, my delirious flight was punctuated by others hacking with a similar cough: so my feverish and cough-riddled sleep was not laced with guilt.
Day 7 saw me functioning as a zombie: I walked through JFK airport in a trance – wondering if it was my corporeal body or a wraith (having left the real body dead on the plane). While everyone wanted to hug and kiss me in the New York cold – I had to ward-them-off. I also took my last antibiotic (and they hadn’t helped a wit); but my relatives started me on a new set of antibiotics: Brother-in-law Nasser – plied me full-of-cognac (which DID make numb to the discomfort) and I learned that Cousin Manny was on Day 11 of the same shit I had and had already infected the house. So I spent Day 7 comfortably numb: sleeping and drinking cognac.
Everyone felt I had to see the city on Day 8 and made me go to a Korean buffet to get my energy up: the plum wine and soup certainly helped – but I still felt too weak to take on NYC. Unfortunately I was no match for the weight of the assemblage and after a wild ride that had us dropping a car off in the Bronx – we headed to the Big Bad City Center! But by 1:00am my back was killing me and the dinner wine had diluted the cognac and I was again miserable.
I refused to leave the house on Day 9 and gagged and spit and sneezed my way through March Madness.
Day 10 saw me trippin’ in the Metropolitan Museum (see next essay) and Days 11, 12, & 13 were much the same as Days 1-9. Day 14 did see the promised improvement with headaches and sniffles and sneezes pretty much gone and energy level up – but chest congestion remained. And this chest congestion persisted into Days 15, 16 & 17 – making me start to worry that this is one of those biologically engineered viruses: like HIV and various strains of the flu (Hey! Red Ice Kreations has given me some validation for my conspiracy theories!!); and, can be re-activated by the shit still clogging my chest – like in that first “Dark Knight” movie…